Francesco Lojacono

Francesco Lojacono was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1838; sources disagree on the exact day, with 16 May and 26 May both appearing in reputable references. He received his first training from his father, Luigi Lojacono, a history and portrait painter, and continued his studies in the Palermo studio of Salvatore Lo Forte. In 1856, after winning a gold medal at a Palermo exhibition for an invented landscape composition, he received a state scholarship to study in Naples, where he entered the school of Filippo Palizzi. He subsequently spent time in Florence, where he came into contact with the Macchiaioli painters, an association that shaped his approach to light and touch without making him a member of the group.

Through the 1870s his reputation spread beyond Sicily. He exhibited internationally in Vienna around 1872 to 1873, showed at the Paris Salon in 1873 and 1874, and in 1878 served on the jury of, and exhibited at, the Paris Exposition Universelle, an occasion on which some critics first raised objections to his academic manner. His paintings were subsequently shown in Munich in 1883 and 1888 and in Berlin in 1891. He held a professorship of landscape painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples from 1872, and later taught landscape and seascape painting at the Palermo Academy of Fine Arts from 1896 to 1914. In 1884 he was named Commendatore of the Order of the Crown of Italy. He died in Palermo in February 1915; his death is confirmed by every major reference consulted, though the precise day is recorded as either the 26th or the 28th across otherwise credible sources.

Lojacono was affirmed in his own lifetime as Sicily's leading landscapist, a status reflected in the nickname "ladro del sole" and in the gold medals and honors he received across his career. The main point of critical friction came at the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle, where some observers began to describe his manner as academic, a tension between his broad popularity and a more demanding international critical standard.

Lojacono's market is small, historical, and denominated mostly in euros through European auction houses rather than the major New York and London contemporary sales. The best documented result found is a Sotheby's sale on 20 November 2011, which realized EUR 96,867 for a view of Acqua Santa near Palermo dated 1869. A second Sotheby's sale, on 20 November 2013, realized EUR 88,797 for "La valle dell'Oreto." Italian market commentary has separately cited a higher figure of EUR 103,700 for a painting titled "Enfants pechant dans la baie de Palerme, au loin, le mont Pellegrino," but the reporting source does not name the auction house, the sale location beyond France, or an exact date, so that figure should be treated as a reported high rather than a confirmed record. Other documented results, at Dorotheum and Van Ham, cluster below the confirmed Sotheby's figures.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Lojacono, so attribution and value rest heavily on provenance, exhibition history, and comparison with the well-documented museum holdings in Agrigento and Palermo. Public auction data is limited: the best documented results are two Sotheby's sales, EUR 96,867 in 2011 and EUR 88,797 in 2013, while a higher, frequently cited figure of EUR 103,700 lacks a confirmed house, location, and date. Even his birth day and the exact day of his 1915 death vary across otherwise reliable references, a reminder that for an artist this historical, individual facts are worth checking against more than one source before they are treated as settled.